Since the advent of the telephone in the early twentieth century, users have been alerted to the presence of an incoming call usually by a ring sound. Early telephones incorporated a mechanical bell into a telephone housing. An incoming call then triggered an electrical solenoid that actuated the bell. More recently, telephones have incorporated electronic ringing devices that output a ring sound through a speaker. Most telephones still use a traditional ring pattern however consisting of a series of brief, staccato monotone sounds interrupted by approximately equal periods of silence.
The mobile telephone was first introduced in 1946, but gained wide commercial acceptance only in the 1990's. Today, consumers increasingly use wireless service as their sole telephone access method. The recent rapid growth of wireless telephone use was accompanied by many related innovations including SMS messaging and digital wireless internet access through mobile telephones. Another innovation was a change away from the standard monotone telephone ring to various diverse ring tones including music and other electronic sounds.
Mobile telephones now offer users the option of selecting their own ring tones. Often these tones are selectable from a menu on the telephone and include a list of preprogrammed sounds provided by the manufacturer. Further, digital wireless telephones allow users to download segments of music that can be played as ring tones. Such music segments are referred to as polyphonic ring tones. Users can then
Polyphonic ring tones have thus become big business for music companies, as mobile telephone subscribers now pay billions of dollars a year to download dedicated polyphonic ring tone music files from network servers to mobile telephones. Subscribers value the ability to download musical ring tones from a wide list of music options as a method for personalizing their telephones.